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Mrs Shipley s Ghost The Right to Travel and Terrorist
Watchlists Jeffrey Kahn Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Jeffrey Kahn
ISBN(s): 9780472028832, 0472028839
Edition: e-book
File Details: PDF, 2.65 MB
Year: 2013
Language: english
Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost
Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost

The Right to Travel and

Terrorist Watchlists

Jeffrey Kahn

The University of Michigan Press ◆ Ann Arbor

Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey D. Kahn
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written
permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid-­free paper
2016 2015 2014 2013  4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data
Kahn, Jeffrey, 1971–­
Mrs. Shipley’s ghost : the right to travel and terrorist watchlists / Jeffrey
Kahn.
pages  cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-­0-­472-­11858-­8 (cloth) —­ ISBN 978-­0-­472-­02883-­2 (e-­book)
1. Freedom of movement—­United States. 2. Passports—­United States.
3. Terrorism—­Prevention—­Law and legislation—­United States.
4. Freedom of movement—­United States—­History—­20th century.
5. Shipley, Ruth. 6. United States. Passport Office—­History—­20th century.
I. Title.
KF4785.K34  2013
342.7308'5—­dc23
2012042606
◆ For LaiYee, Sophia, and Nadia ◆
There is always an easy solution to every human problem—­neat,
plausible, and wrong.
—­H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy 443 (1949)
Contents

List of Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
I. Fact
1. Travel Stories 19
2. “What’s the Point of Being a Citizen?” 36
II. Law
3. Freedom of Movement and the Constitution 57
4. A Brief History of the Passport 81
III. Policy
5. Origins: The Extraordinary Mrs. Shipley 97
6. Change: Digitizing Mrs. Shipley 125
7. Growth: Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost 154
IV. Principle
8. Civis Americanus Sum 205
9. What Is to Be Done? 232
Notes 243
Bibliography 329
Table of Cases 335
Index 339
 Abbreviations

The Agencies

DHS Department of Homeland Security

CBP Customs and Border Protection
TSA Transportation Security Administration
(March 2003–­present)
DOJ Department of Justice
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
TSC Terrorist Screening Center
DOS Department of State
DOT Department of Transportation
FAA Federal Aviation Administration
TSA Transportation Security Administration
(November 2001–­March 2003)
ODNI Office of the Director of National Intelligence
NCTC National Counterterrorism Center (formerly TTIC)

The Watchlists*

APIS Advanced Passenger Information System (1988; CBP): A system that

maintains passenger and crew manifest information from commercial
airlines.
CLASS Consular Lookout and Support Systems (1995; DOS): A system
that vets visa and passport applications.
x ◆ Abbreviations

No Fly List (2001; TSA): A list of individuals prohibited access to commer-

cial air travel.
Selectee List (2001; TSA): A list of individuals subject to heightened airport
security screening.
TIDE Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (2002; NCTC): A clear-
inghouse to centralize collection and analysis of terrorist information.
“TIPOFF” (1987; DOS): A State Department terrorist watchlist that con-
tained approximately 60,000 names on September 11, 2001.
TSDB Terrorist Screening Database (2004; TSC): The consolidated terror-
ist watchlist from which specialized watchlists, such as the No Fly List,
are derived.
VGTOF Violent Gang / Terrorist Organization File (1995; FBI): A com-
ponent of the National Crime Information Center used by law enforce-
ment. In 2009, this file was divided into two separate files: the Gang File
and the Known or Suspected Terrorist File.

*This book references many watchlists. This list may help the reader keep them straight.
Each list is identified by its commonly used acronym or initialism. The year of origin
for the watchlist and the agency that is frequently associated with it follows. This is
not a complete list of known U.S. Government watchlists, which is always in flux
but would include, at a minimum, the Interagency Border Inspection System (IBIS),
Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS), National Law Enforcement
Telecommunications System (NLETS), National Automated Immigration Lookout
System (NAILS), Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS),
and the Automated Biometrics Identification System (IDENT).
 Acknowledgments

This book owes its life to the paper edition of the New York Times. In Octo-
ber 2006, I stumbled on a short article by Randal Archibold buried on page
A10 of the national edition. I doubt that I would have stopped to click a hy-
perlink to its title, and it is unlikely that a computer algorithm would have
selected it for me based on my past reading history. But the first sentence
sank its fangs into me: “Two American citizens of Pakistani descent returned
to the United States on Sunday, five months after they were denied permis-
sion to fly home to California unless they submitted to an interrogation by
F.B.I. terrorism investigators.”1
I tore the story out of the newspaper and let it gnaw at me as the page
yellowed on my desk. Out of the clipping, a law review article emerged.2
While researching that article, I stumbled on a reference to Mrs. Shipley.
That discovery owes its life to the Internet. Without the free, searchable
digital archives of magazines and newspapers, I never would have come to
know her well enough to want to seek out her files at the National Archives
in College Park, Maryland. Those visits to NARA led to another law review
article.3
So, ironically enough, I discovered Mrs. Shipley’s passport-­and-­rubber-­
stamp world thanks to massive digital databases of the sort now used to
power terrorist watchlists. But I found the inspiration to examine the No
Fly List, an invention of the twenty-­first century, thanks to the broadsheets
of the Gray Lady.
While working on drafts of these articles and this book, I traveled around
the country to present their arguments and gather counterarguments. I
thank the faculty at the Stanford Law School, University of Minnesota Law
School, University of Wisconsin School of Law, Lewis and Clark School of
Law, Villanova University School of Law, University of Connecticut School
xii ◆ Acknowledgments

of Law, and Texas Wesleyan University School of Law for their invitations to
share my work with them. I am also grateful to the organizers of several con-
ferences at which my work was also selected for presentation: the Yale/Stan-
ford Junior Faculty Forum, the Junior Faculty Workshop at Michigan State
University, the AALS National Conference in New York City, the National
Security Law Junior Faculty Workshop at Wake Forest University School of
Law, and the Gloucester Summer Legal Conference in Gloucester, England.
Along the way, I benefited from the generosity of many talented human
beings who welcomed me into their archives and libraries. I owe special
debts of thanks to Gail Daly, Director, and Lynn Murray, Head of Research
Services, at the SMU Underwood Law Library; Elizabeth Gray, Finding
Aids Liaison in the Archives II Reference Section, National Archives at Col-
lege Park, Maryland; and Linda Schweizer, Law and Business Librarian at
the Ralph J. Bunche Library, U.S. Department of State.
Michael Rolince opened an important door for me at the FBI early in
this project. Dr. Mark Hove, a historian at the Office of the Historian, U.S.
Department of State, and Dr. John Fox, the FBI Historian, were especially
generous with their time and expertise. I also thank Assistant Director Mi-
chael Kortan and public affairs specialists Susan McKee and Trent Duffy,
at the Office of Public Affairs, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Chad
Kolton, Public Affairs Officer, Terrorist Screening Center. I am grateful
to these dedicated current and former civil servants, who were fully aware
of my critical views of the FBI’s role in this system. Not everyone shared
their enlightened views about access to government officials. Attempts to
meet with current officials in the Department of Homeland Security and
the Transportation Security Administration in both the Bush and Obama
administrations were repeatedly rebuffed.
I could not have traveled to so many archives, libraries, law schools, gov-
ernment offices, conferences, and workshops without the financial support
of the SMU Dedman School of Law, the SMU Tower Center for Political
Studies, and the Marla and Michael Boone Faculty Research Fund. Even
with funding aplenty, I could not have pursued these topics without the sup-
port of my family, my colleagues, and friends. Jan Spann, my faculty assistant
at SMU, was always ready to lend a hand for tasks big and small. Her proud
reports about her sons, Petty Officers First Class Adam and Eric Spann,
U.S.N., were frequent reminders of the gravity of the threat to our country
and the dedication of those who face it daily. To single out a few individuals
is only to recognize those who went out of their way to help me along my
way. I thank Bruce Ackerman, John Attanasio, Joe Bankman, Jeffrey Bellin,
Nancy Bielaski, Lackland M. Bloom Jr., Marion “Spike” Bowman, William
 Acknowledgments ◆ xiii

Bridge, Thomas R. Burke, Dale Carpenter, Bobby Chesney, Danielle Citron,

Anthony Colangelo, Nathan Cortez, William V. Dorsaneo III, Linda Eads,
Richard Thompson Ford, Kathie Hendley, David Hoffman, Jeff Hood, Alan
Kahn, Andrea Kahn, Stephen Kahn, Brian Kalt, James Mangiafico, Michael
Moreland, Fred Moss, W. Keith Robinson, Carl Rollyson, Meghan Ryan,
Martin Saxon, Glen Staszewski, Juliet Stumpf, Jenia Turner, James Van de
Velde, Rose Villazor, and Tung Yin. I also thank my students, in particular,
Richelle Blanchard Campbell, Vanessa Jeffries, Vaniecy S. Nwigwe, Amber
Reece, Jonathan M. Whalen, and Joseph A. Wyly. You will detect their im-
proving hand where the evidence is strongest, the arguments tightest, the
prose smoothest, and the conclusions most persuasive. The rest is my fault.
The Dahl cartoon in chapter 6 first appeared in the Boston Herald Trav-
eler’s September 23, 1968, edition and is reprinted with permission of the
Boston Herald.
Too many holidays, Sundays, dinners, late nights, and early mornings
were spent working on this book. Those hours did not belong to me; I took
them from LaiYee and Sophia. Sometimes I despair that the debt cannot be
repaid, for time is not a fungible commodity. I hope they understand why I
did it, and for whom.
J.D.K.
Muskegon, Michigan
 Introduction
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom
are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-­minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by
men of zeal, well-­meaning but without understanding.
—­Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1928)1

It was a righteous mission back then, and it is a righteous mission

today.
—­Timothy J. Healy, Director,
Terrorist Screening Center (2009)2

Imagine waiting in Hong Kong International Airport for the final leg of a
long journey home to the United States. You are traveling with your family.
Everyone is tired. When you reach the front of a long line at the ticket coun-
ter, the agent looks nervous: “I’m sorry, but I cannot print your boarding
pass. Your name appears on a United States terrorism watchlist.”
You are stunned. Obviously someone, somewhere, has made a mistake. A
simple misspelling, perhaps. You ask to speak to a supervisor, but she shrugs
helplessly as you show her your U.S. passport, the ticket stubs from your
previous flight, even your driver’s license. “There is nothing I can do. It’s not
our list. But we cannot board anyone who is on it. You will have to contact
the Department of Homeland Security.” She hands you a slip of paper with
a telephone number and a website address on it. As you leave your place in
line, you are stung by the nervous glances of travelers who overheard your
exchange.
Waiting on hold, a slow sense of dread begins to overwhelm you. This is
not going to be resolved with a simple phone call. What is this “watchlist”?
2 ◆ Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost

Who put your name on it? How can your name be removed from it? How
can an American citizen be kept from returning home? Your thoughts turn
to more immediate, practical concerns. You are thousands of miles from
home. Your family received their boarding passes; should they travel without
you? Can you stay here? Fly to Canada? Take a boat?
Still waiting, you open the website that the gate agent gave you: https://
trip.dhs.gov/. “Thank you for contacting the DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry
Program. Please check ALL the scenarios that describe your travel experi-
ence.” You start to scroll down, clicking all the categories that apply: “I am
unable to print a boarding pass at the airport kiosk or at home”; “I was
denied boarding”; “The airline ticket agent stated that I am on a Federal
Government Watch List.” Some of the categories seem broad, others quite
specific: “I feel I have been discriminated against by a government agent
based on race, disability, religion, gender, or ethnicity”; “I believe my privacy
has been violated because a government agent has exposed or inappropri-
ately shared my personal information.” Then there is the ubiquitous “other”
category. Should you click that one, too? The next screen asks for personal
information. The heading states: “The following information is voluntary;
however, it may be needed to complete your request.” But when you omit
your date of birth, a message pops up to say that this information is required
to proceed. This is confusing. What if you make a mistake? Who is going to
read this? Will you ever learn what started all this trouble?
Do you need a lawyer?
This hypothetical is drawn from the experience of an American family
split in half by the United States Government’s “No Fly List.” Half the fam-
ily was allowed to return to their home in California, but father and son
were stranded for five months, thousands of miles away, as their attorney
fought against a remote and classified government program. Their story is
told in chapter 2 as an example of how the No Fly List has expanded from
a sharply honed tool for protecting the security of commercial aircraft to a
broad and blunt instrument to pursue all kinds of government interests. For
example, chapters 1 and 2 describe how it has been used to apply pressure
to citizens to agree to FBI interrogations and polygraph tests as a condition
of returning home to America. In fact, Richard Falkenrath, who as a senior
White House official led the drive to consolidate the nation’s watchlists im-
mediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, urged the expan-
sive deployment of watchlists in testimony before the U.S. Senate only two
weeks before this family was reunited: “The federal government needs to
do a much better job of promoting the widespread utilization of watchlist
screening.”3 Michael Jackson, Deputy Secretary of Transportation on Sep-
 Introduction ◆ 3

tember 11 and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2007,

agrees: watchlists “shouldn’t be restricted to air travel.”4
The logic behind watchlists makes the urge to expand their use practi-
cally irresistible. What should dictate the limits of expansion? For decades
before September 11, the FAA maintained a system of issuing what it called
“security directives” to airlines that it used to deny boarding to individuals
deemed to present a “specific and credible threat” to an aircraft.5 These di-
rectives identified only a handful of people year to year. Now, according to
Director Timothy Healy, whose Terrorist Screening Center is responsible for
maintaining the No Fly List, the federal government may prevent the travel
of “known or suspected terrorist[s]” who “present a threat to civil aviation
or national security.”6 With three small words, this disjunctive phrase now
justifies adding a person to the No Fly List who does not pose a threat to civil
aviation. In early 2011, Director Healy said that the No Fly List prohibited
over 10,000 people from flying, up to 1,000 of them being U.S. citizens.7 A
year later, the Associated Press reported in early 2012 that government figures
showed the list had nearly doubled in size to 21,000 names, while the num-
ber of Americans on it reportedly decreased to around 500 people.8
So what? After September 11, who could object to a policy that denied
known and suspected terrorists access to anything? But who decides that
these people are terrorists, or even suspected terrorists, that they threaten
national security, and that their liberty should be restricted? The watchlisters
are prosecutor, judge, jury, and jailor. Their decisions are made in secret
and their rules for decision—­like their evidence for deciding—­are classi-
fied. There is no appeal from the decision of the watchlisters, except to the
watchlisters themselves.
But perhaps that, too, is tolerable in this age. Wouldn’t it be foolish to be
too open about the details of this list? Known and suspected terrorists could
escape detection. They should not be treated as mere criminals entitled to
the rights that police and prosecutors must respect, and courts protect.
There lies the problem. Who “they” are is left to the watchlisters. Not
only do the new standards make that discretion broader than ever before,
the pressure to watchlist someone is great. In its September 2010 report on
the FBI’s investigations of various domestic advocacy groups, the FBI’s In-
spector General criticized the practice of overclassifying matters as domestic
terrorism cases.9 It is only human nature that those who are daily confronted
by a thick and terrifying threat matrix should inevitably prefer to err on the
side of watchlisting.
Of course, that is the rationale for requiring that the judgment of even
the most experienced police and prosecutors be evaluated by a neutral and
4 ◆ Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost

dispassionate magistrate. But there is no such person involved in the watch-

listing process—­the decision is returned to the original deciders. There is an
appeals process, of course, but the burden is on the individual to prove that
he or she is not a terrorist or some other security threat. And this must be
done without access to the information that led to the watchlisting in the
first place. What if someone made a mistake? Or the judgment is based on
evidence that is of unknown provenance or weak credibility or susceptible
to multiple interpretations? In the absence of legal standards that are rou-
tinely enforced by neutral third parties (as courts routinely enforce the legal
standards that govern searches, arrests, and other invasions of an individual’s
liberty), what institutional incentives exist that would lead an anonymous
analyst to resolve ambiguous evidence in any way other than in favor of
watchlisting? Who wants to be the official who erred in favor of a terrorist?
As David Addington, Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney, once angrily
responded to Jack Goldsmith, a senior Justice Department official, “If you
rule that way, the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next
attack will be on your hands.” Imagine the pressure on lower-­level govern-
ment officials expected to carry out orders. As Goldsmith notes, “It is hard
to overstate the impact that the incessant waves of threat reports have on the
judgment of people inside the executive branch who are responsible for pro-
tecting American lives.”10 Or, as TSC Director Timothy Healy put it, “The
problem I’ve got is if I allow that person to get on a plane and something
happens, what do I say to those victims that go on the plane?”11
The technology that facilitates these watchlists develops even faster than
the changes in air travel that catalyzed their creation. When the FAA began
its system of security directives in the early 1990s, the fax machine was the
fastest means of distributing its short, paper list of persons considered too
dangerous to fly. (The FAA should not be singled out. The State Depart-
ment’s list of people considered too dangerous to receive a visa was kept in
a shoebox.) Today, massive government-­run computer databases transmit
information at lightning speed. Indeed, the state no longer need wait until
the moments before departure for an airline’s gate agent to determine that a
person should be denied boarding. All travelers now require the federal gov-
ernment’s express prior permission to board any aircraft (or maritime vessel)
that will enter, leave, or travel within the United States.12
Of course, no one realizes that permission is required—­or has even
been sought—­until it has been refused. In late January 2009, the Trans-
portation Security Administration (a component of the Department of
Homeland Security) began the phased implementation of a program
called Secure Flight.13 This program requires every person who wishes to
 Introduction ◆ 5

buy an airplane ticket to submit his full name, date of birth, and gender to
the airline at the time of purchase. Although the government permits the
airline to sell the ticket right away, that reservation cannot be redeemed
for a boarding pass without the government’s assent. This Secure Flight
data is sent to the TSA (and sometimes to a support office run through
the FBI called the Terrorist Screening Center), where analysts determine
whether the information matches entries on any of their watchlists. Long
before the traveler arrives at the airport, TSA analysts can now arrive at the
decision that the traveler will not receive a boarding pass. In June 2010,
the TSA achieved its goal of 100 percent watchlist prescreening.14 In other
words, each time you travel by airplane in American airspace, it is by the
grace of the U.S. Government.
The speed of technological change will not slow down. And that means
that the pressure to expand watchlisting and screening will only grow as
more and more becomes possible. Why stop at the hazards of air travel? If a
person is too dangerous to fly, isn’t he too dangerous to drive a truck laden
with dangerous chemicals? If a No Fly List, and a No Hazmat List, why not
a No Gun List? Who would want to give a terrorist easy access to a gun or
a truck full of dangerous materials?15 Certainly, this is the opinion of the
controllers of these watchlists. In a PowerPoint slide shown to the author (in
unclassified form) and to congressional staff (with the inclusion of sensitive
security information, or “SSI”), the Director of the Terrorist Screening Cen-
ter, Timothy Healy, made abundantly clear how versatile a terrorist watchlist
can be.16 A simplified version of this display appears in figure 1, but the col-
orful graphics on the original slide included a reproduction of 9/11 terrorist
Mohamed Atta’s U.S. visa and images of an American Airlines aircraft, an
automatic handgun, and John Riggins’s famous touchdown run in Super
Bowl XVII. What do all of these things have in common?
The message was clear: this Terrorist Screening Database (the TSDB)
could be used for any number of security purposes. And yet this protection
comes with a price. The secrecy that shrouds watchlists—­indeed, the secrecy
necessary to make them useful in the first place—­conflicts with our most ba-
sic instincts for an open government accountable to its citizens and checked
in its inevitable excesses by a watchful, neutral judiciary.
The logic of a No Gun List or a No Hazmat List is identical to that of
the list that started them all: the No Fly List, the subject of this book. Ter-
rorists rarely self-­identify; at least, they tend to prefer anonymity before it
is too late to stop them. Therefore, the government must deploy its intel-
ligence resources to find them. Once identified, those on the list should not
have easy access to a wide variety of activities and things that are essentially
Other documents randomly have
different content
She remained silent a moment, then said:—
—"Missié makes photographs...."
—"You want a photograph of yourself, Cyrillia?"
—"Oh! no, Missié, I am too ugly and too old. But I have a daughter. She is beautiful—
yon bel bois,—like a beautiful tree, as we say here. I would like so much to have her
picture taken."
A photographic instrument belonging to a clumsy amateur suggested this request to
Cyrillia. I could not attempt such work successfully; but I gave her a note to a
photographer of much skill; and a few days later the portrait was sent to the house.
Cyrillia's daughter was certainly a comely girl,—tall and almost gold-colored, with
pleasing features; and the photograph looked very nice, though less nice than the
original. Half the beauty of these people is a beauty of tint,—a tint so exquisite
sometimes that I have even heard white creoles declare no white complexion
compares with it: the greater part of the charm remaining is grace,—the grace of
movement; and neither of these can be rendered by photography. I had the portrait
framed for Cyrillia, to hang up beside her little pictures.
When it came, she was not in; I put it in her room, and waited to see the effect. On
returning, she entered there; and I did not see her for so long a time that I stole to the
door of the chamber to observe her. She was standing before the portrait,—looking at
it, talking to it as if it were alive. "Yche moin, yche moin!... Oui! ou toutt bel!—yche
moin bel." (My child, my child!... Yes, thou art all beautiful: my child is beautiful.) All at
once she turned—perhaps she noticed my shadow, or felt my presence in some way:
her eyes were wet;—she started, flushed, then laughed.
—"Ah! Missié, you watch me;—ou guette moin.... But she is my child. Why should I not
love her?... She looks so beautiful there."
—"She is beautiful, Cyrillia;—I love to see you love her."
She gazed at the picture a little longer in silence;—then turned to me again, and asked
earnestly:—
—"Pouki yo ja ka fai pòtrai palé—anh?... pisse yo ka tiré y toutt samm ou: c'est ou-
menm!... Yo douè fai y palé 'tou."
(Why do they not make a portrait talk,—tell me? For they draw it just all like you!—it is
yourself: they ought to make it talk.)
—"Perhaps they will be able to do something like that one of these days, Cyrillia."
—"Ah! that would be so nice. Then I could talk to her. C'est yon bel moune moin fai—y
bel, joli moune!... Moin sé causé épi y."...

... And I, watching her beautiful childish emotion, thought:—Cursed be the cruelty that
would persuade itself that one soul may be like another,—that one affection may be
replaced by another,—that individual goodness is not a thing apart, original, untwinned
on earth, but only the general characteristic of a class or type, to be sought and found
and utilized at will!... Self-curséd he who denies the divinity of love! Each heart, each
brain in the billions of humanity,—even so surely as sorrow lives,—feels and thinks in
some special way unlike any other; and goodness in each has its unlikeness to all other
goodness,—and thus its own infinite preciousness; for however humble, however
small, it is something all alone, and God never repeats his work. No heart-beat is
cheap, no gentleness is despicable, no kindness is common; and Death, in removing a
life—the simplest life ignored,—removes what never will reappear through the eternity
of eternities,—since every being is the sum of a chain of experiences infinitely varied
from all others.... To some Cyrillia's happy tears might bring a smile: to me that smile
would seem the unforgivable sin against the Giver of Life!...
 "PA COMBINÉ, CHÈ!"

More finely than any term in our tongue does the French word frisson
express that faint shiver—as of a ghostly touch thrilling from hair to feet
—which intense pleasure sometimes gives, and which is felt most often
and most strongly in childhood, when the imagination is still so sensitive
and so powerful that one's whole being trembles to the vibration of a
fancy. And this electric word best expresses, I think, that long thrill of
amazed delight inspired by the first knowledge of the tropic world,—a
sensation of weirdness in beauty, like the effect, in child-days, of fairy
tales and stories of phantom isles.
For all unreal seems the vision of it. The transfiguration of all things by
the stupendous light and the strange vapors of the West Indian sea,—
the interorbing of flood and sky in blinding azure,—the sudden spirings
of gem-tinted coast from the ocean,—the iris-colors and astounding
shapes of the hills,—the unimaginable magnificence of palms,—the high
woods veiled and swathed in vines that blaze like emerald: all remind
you in some queer way of things half forgotten,—the fables of enchantment.
Enchantment it is indeed—but only the enchantment of that Great Wizard, the
Sun, whose power you are scarcely beginning to know.
And into the life of the tropical city you enter as in dreams one enters into the life
of a dead century. In all the quaint streets—over whose luminous yellow façades
the beautiful burning violet of the sky appears as if but a few feet away—you see
youth good to look upon as ripe fruit; and the speech of the people is soft as a
coo; and eyes of brown girls caress you with a passing look.... Love's world, you
may have heard, has few restraints here, where Nature ever seems to cry out,
like the swart seller of corossoles:—"ça qui le doudoux?"...
How often in some passing figure does one discern an ideal almost realized, and
forbear to follow it with untired gaze only when another, another, and yet
another, come to provoke the same aesthetic fancy,—to win the same unspoken
praise! How often does one long for artist's power to fix the fleeting lines, to
catch the color, to seize the whole exotic charm of some special type!... One finds
a strange charm even in the timbre of these voices,—these half-breed voices,
always with a tendency to contralto, and vibrant as ringing silver. What is that
mysterious quality in a voice which has power to make the pulse beat faster, even
when the singer is unseen?... do only the birds know?
... It seems to you that you could never weary of watching this picturesque life,—
of studying the costumes, brilliant with butterfly colors,—and the statuesque
semi-nudity of laboring hundreds,—and the untaught grace of attitudes,—and the
simplicity of manners. Each day brings some new pleasure of surprise;—even
from the window of your lodging you are ever noting something novel, something
to delight the sense of oddity or beauty.... Even in your room everything interests
you, because of its queerness or quaintness: you become fond of the objects
about you,—the great noiseless rocking-chairs that lull to sleep;—the immense
bed (lit-à-bateau) of heavy polished wood, with its richly carven sides reaching
down to the very floor;—and its invariable companion, the little couch or sopha,
similarly shaped but much narrower, used only for the siesta;—and the thick red
earthen vessels (dobannes) which keep your drinking-water cool on the hottest
days, but which are always filled thrice between sunrise and sunset with clear
water from the mountain,—dleau toutt vivant, "all alive";—and the verrines, tall
glass vases with stems of bronze in which your candle will burn steadily despite a
draught;—and even those funny little angels and Virgins which look at you from
their bracket in the corner, over the oil lamp you are presumed to kindle nightly
in their honor, however great a heretic you may be.... You adopt at once, and
without reservation, those creole home habits which are the result of centuries of
experience with climate,—abstention from solid food before the middle of the
day, repose after the noon meal;—and you find each repast an experience as
curious as it is agreeable. It is not at all difficult to accustom oneself to green
pease stewed with sugar, eggs mixed with tomatoes, salt fish stewed in milk,
palmiste pith made into salad, grated cocoa formed into rich cakes, and dishes of
titiri cooked in oil,—the minuscule fish, of which a thousand will scarcely fill a
saucer. Above all, you are astonished by the endless variety of vegetables and
fruits, of all conceivable shapes and inconceivable flavors.
And it does not seem possible that even the simplest little recurrences of this
antiquated, gentle home-life could ever prove wearisome by daily repetition
through the months and years. The musical greeting of the colored child, tapping
at your door before sunrise,—"Bonjou', Missié,"—as she brings your cup of black
hot coffee and slice of corossole;—the smile of the silent brown girl who carries
your meals up-stairs in a tray poised upon her brightly coiffed head, and who
stands by while you dine, watching every chance to serve, treading quite silently
with her pretty bare feet;—the pleasant manners of the màchanne who brings
your fruit, the porteuse who delivers your bread, the blanchisseuse who washes
your linen at the river,—and all the kindly folk who circle about your existence,
with their trays and turbans, their foulards and douillettes, their primitive grace
and creole chatter: these can never cease to have a charm for you. You cannot
fail to be touched also by the amusing solicitude of these good people for your
health, because you are a stranger: their advice about hours to go out and hours
to stay at home,—about roads to follow and paths to avoid on account of snakes,
—about removing your hat and coat, or drinking while warm.... Should you fall ill,
this solicitude intensifies to devotion; you are tirelessly tended;—the good people
will exhaust their wonderful knowledge of herbs to get you well,—will climb the
mornes even at midnight, in spite of the risk of snakes and fear of zombis, to
gather strange plants by the light of a lantern. Natural joyousness, natural
kindliness, heart-felt desire to please, childish capacity of being delighted with
trifles,—seem characteristic of all this colored population. It is turning its best
side towards you, no doubt; but the side of the nature made visible appears none
the less agreeable because you suspect there is another which you have not
seen. What kindly inventiveness is displayed in contriving surprises for you, or in
finding some queer thing to show you,—some fantastic plant, or grotesque fish,
or singular bird! What apparent pleasure in taking trouble to gratify,—what
innocent frankness of sympathy!... Childishly beautiful seems the readiness of
this tinted race to compassionate: you do not reflect that it is also a savage trait,
while the charm of its novelty is yet upon you. No one is ashamed to shed tears
for the death of a pet animal; any mishap to a child creates excitement, and
evokes an immediate volunteering of services. And this compassionate sentiment
is often extended, in a semi-poetical way, even to inanimate objects. One June
morning, I remember, a three-masted schooner lying in the bay took fire, and
had to be set adrift. An immense crowd gathered on the wharves; and I saw
many curious manifestations of grief,—such grief, perhaps, as an infant feels for
the misfortune of a toy it imagines to possess feeling, but not the less sincere
because unreasoning. As the flames climbed the rigging, and the masts fell, the
crowd moaned as though looking upon some human tragedy; and everywhere
one could hear such strange cries of pity as, "Pauv' malhérè!" (poor unfortunate),
"pauv' diabe!"... "Toutt baggaïe-y pou allé, casse!" (All its things-to-go-with are
broken!) sobbed a girl, with tears streaming down her cheeks.... She seemed to
believe it was alive....
... And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity touches you more;—
day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid Nature—delighting in furious color—
bewitches you more. Already the anticipated necessity of having to leave it all
some day—the far-seen pain of bidding it farewell—weighs upon you, even in
dreams.

II

Reader, if you be of those who have longed in vain for a glimpse of that tropic
world,—tales of whose beauty charmed your childhood, and made stronger upon
you that weird mesmerism of the sea which pulls at the heart of a boy,—one who
had longed like you, and who, chance-led, beheld at last the fulfilment of the
wish, can swear to you that the magnificence of the reality far excels the
imagining. Those who know only the lands in which all processes for the
satisfaction of human wants have been perfected under the terrible stimulus of
necessity, can little guess the witchery of that Nature ruling the zones of color
and of light. Within their primeval circles, the earth remains radiant and young as
in that preglacial time whereof some transmitted memory may have created the
hundred traditions of an Age of Gold. And the prediction of a paradise to come,—
a phantom realm of rest and perpetual light: may this not have been but a sum
of the remembrances and the yearnings of man first exiled from his heritage,—a
dream born of the great nostalgia of races migrating to people the pallid North?...

... But with the realization of the hope to know this magical Nature you learn that
the actuality varies from the preconceived ideal otherwise than in surpassing it.
Unless you enter the torrid world equipped with scientific knowledge
extraordinary, your anticipations are likely to be at fault. Perhaps you had
pictured to yourself the effect of perpetual summer as a physical delight,—
something like an indefinite prolongation of the fairest summer weather ever
enjoyed at home. Probably you had heard of fevers, risks of acclimatization,
intense heat, and a swarming of venomous creatures; but you may nevertheless
believe you know what precautions to take; and published statistics of climatic
temperature may have persuaded you that the heat is not difficult to bear. By
that enervation to which all white dwellers in the tropics are subject you may
have understood a pleasant languor,—a painless disinclination to effort in a
country where physical effort is less needed than elsewhere,—a soft temptation
to idle away the hours in a hammock, under the shade of giant trees. Perhaps
you have read, with eyes of faith, that torpor of the body is favorable to activity
of the mind, and therefore believe that the intellectual powers can be stimulated
and strengthened by tropical influences:—you suppose that enervation will reveal
itself only as a beatific indolence which will leave the brain free to think with
lucidity, or to revel in romantic dreams.

III

You are not at first undeceived;—the disillusion is long delayed. Doubtless you
have read the delicious idyl of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (this is not Mauritius, but
the old life of Mauritius was wellnigh the same); and you look for idyllic
personages among the beautiful humanity about you,—for idyllic scenes among
the mornes shadowed by primeval forest, and the valleys threaded by a hundred
brooks. I know not whether the faces and forms that you seek will be revealed to
you;—but you will not be able to complain for the lack of idyllic loveliness in the
commonest landscape. Whatever artistic knowledge you possess will merely
teach you the more to wonder at the luxuriant purple of the sea, the violet
opulence of the sky, the violent beauty of foliage greens, the lilac tints of
evening, and the color-enchantments distance gives in an atmosphere full of
iridescent power,—the amethysts and agates, the pearls and ghostly golds, of far
mountainings. Never, you imagine, never could one tire of wandering through
those marvellous valleys,—of climbing the silent roads under emeraldine shadow
to heights from which the city seems but a few inches long, and the moored
ships tinier than gnats that cling to a mirror,—or of swimming in that blue bay
whose clear flood stays warm through all the year.[53] Or, standing alone, in
some aisle of colossal palms, where humming-birds are flashing and shooting like
a showering of jewel-fires, you feel how weak the skill of poet or painter to fix
the sensation of that white-pillared imperial splendor;—and you think you know
why creoles exiled by necessity to colder lands may sicken for love of their own,
—die of home-yearning, as did many a one in far Louisiana, after the political
tragedies of 1848....
 DIDIER SPRINGS
At the end of a gorgeous ride, in a deep
ravine we found the spring--warm,
effervescent water gushing from the depths
of the earth.
... But you are not a creole, and must pay tribute of suffering to the climate of
the tropics. You will have to learn that a temperature of 90° Fahr. in the tropics is
by no means the same thing as 90° Fahr. in Europe or the United States;—that
the mornes cannot be climbed with safety during the hotter hours of the
afternoon;—that by taking a long walk you incur serious danger of catching a
fever;—that to enter the high woods, a path must be hewn with the cutlass
through the creepers and vines and undergrowth,—among snakes, venomous
insects, venomous plants, and malarial exhalations;—that the finest blown dust is
full of irritant and invisible enemies;—that it is folly to seek repose on a sward, or
in the shade of trees,—particularly under tamarinds. Only after you have by
experience become well convinced of these facts can you begin to comprehend
something general in regard to West Indian conditions of life.
[53]Rufz remarks that the first effect of this climate of the Antilles is a sort of general physical
excitement, an exaltation, a sense of unaccustomed strength,—which begets the desire of
immediate action to discharge the surplus of nervous force. "Then all distances seem brief;—the
greatest fatigues are braved without hesitation."—Études.

IV

... Slowly the knowledge comes.... For months the vitality of a strong European
(the American constitution bears the test even better) may resist the debilitating
climate: perhaps the stranger will flatter himself that, like men habituated to
heavy labor in stifling warmth,—those toiling in mines, in founderies in engine-
rooms of ships, at iron-furnaces,—so he too may become accustomed, without
losing his strength to the continuous draining of the pores, to the exhausting
force of this strange motionless heat which compels change of clothing many
times a day. But gradually he finds that it is not heat alone which is debilitating
him, but the weight and septic nature of an atmosphere charged with vapor, with
electricity, with unknown agents not less inimical to human existence than
propitious to vegetal luxuriance. If he has learned those rules of careful living
which served him well in a temperate climate, he will not be likely to abandon
them among his new surroundings; and they will help him; no doubt,—
particularly if he be prudent enough to avoid the sea-coast at night, and all
exposure to dews or early morning mists, and all severe physical strain.
Nevertheless, he becomes slowly conscious of changes extraordinary going on
within him,—in especial, a continual sensation of weight in the brain, daily
growing, and compelling frequent repose;—also a curious heightening of nervous
sensibility to atmospheric changes, to tastes and odors, to pleasure and pain.
Total loss of appetite soon teaches him to follow the local custom of eating
nothing solid before mid-day, and enables him to divine how largely the necessity
for caloric enters into the food-consumption of northern races. He becomes
abstemious, eats sparingly, and discovers his palate to have become oddly
exacting—finds that certain fruits and drinks are indeed, as the creoles assert,
appropriate only to particular physical conditions corresponding with particular
hours of the day. Corossole is only to be eaten in the morning, after black coffee;
—vermouth is good to drink only between the hours of nine and half-past ten;—
rum or other strong liquor only before meals or after fatigue;—claret or wine only
during a repast, and then very sparingly,—for, strangely enough, wine is found to
be injurious in a country where stronger liquors are considered among the prime
necessaries of existence.
And he expected, at the worst, to feel lazy, to lose some physical energy! But this
is no mere languor which now begins to oppress him;—it is a sense of vital
exhaustion painful as the misery of convalescence: the least effort provokes a
perspiration profuse enough to saturate clothing, and the limbs ache as from
muscular overstrain;—the lightest attire feels almost insupportable;—the idea of
sleeping even under a sheet is torture, for the weight of a silken handkerchief is
discomfort. One wishes one could live as a savage,—naked in the heat. One
burns with a thirst impossible to assuage—feels a desire for stimulants, a sense
of difficulty in breathing, occasional quickenings of the heart's action so violent as
to alarm. Then comes at last the absolute dread of physical exertion. Some slight
relief might be obtained, no doubt, by resigning oneself forthwith to adopt the
gentle indolent manners of the white creoles, who do not walk when it is possible
to ride, and never ride if it is equally convenient to drive;—but the northern
nature generally refuses to accept this ultimate necessity without a protracted
and painful struggle.
... Not even then has the stranger fully divined the evil power of this tropical
climate, which remodels the characters of races within a couple of generations,—
changing the shape of the skeleton,—deepening the cavities of the orbits to
protect the eye from the flood of light,—transforming the blood,—darkening the
skin. Following upon the nervous modifications of the first few months come
modifications and changes of a yet graver kind;—with the loss of bodily energy
ensues a more than corresponding loss of mental activity and strength. The
whole range of thought diminishes, contracts,—shrinks to that narrowest of
circles which surrounds the physical sell, the inner ring of merely material
sensation: the memory weakens appallingly;—the mind operates faintly, slowly,
incoherently,—almost as in dreams. Serious reading, vigorous thinking, become
impossible. You doze over the most important project;—you fall fast asleep over
the most fascinating of books.
Then comes the vain revolt, the fruitless desperate striving with this occult power
which numbs the memory and enchants the will. Against the set resolve to think,
to act, to study, there is a hostile rush of unfamiliar pain to the temples, to the
eyes, to the nerve centres of the brain; and a great weight is somewhere in the
head, always growing heavier: then comes a drowsiness that overpowers and
stupefies, like the effect of a narcotic. And this obligation to sleep, to sink into
coma, will impose itself just so surely as you venture to attempt any mental work
in leisure hours, after the noon repast, or during the heat of the afternoon. Yet at
night you can scarcely sleep. Repose is made feverish by a still heat that keeps
the skin drenched with thick sweat, or by a perpetual, unaccountable, tingling
and prickling of the whole body-surface. With the approach of morning the air
grows cooler, and slumber comes,—a slumber of exhaustion, dreamless and
sickly; and perhaps when you would rise with the sun you feel such a dizziness,
such a numbness, such a torpor, that only by the most intense effort can you
keep your feet for the first five minutes. You experience a sensation that recalls
the poet's fancy of death-in-life, or old stories of sudden rising from the grave: it
is as though all the electricity of will had ebbed away,—all the vital force
evaporated, in the heat of the night....

It might be stated, I think, with safety, that for a certain class of invalids the
effect of the climate is like a powerful stimulant,—a tonic medicine which may
produce astonishing results within a fixed time,—but which if taken beyond that
time will prove dangerous. After a certain number of months, your first
enthusiasm with your new surroundings dies out;—even Nature ceases to affect
the senses in the same way: the frisson ceases to come to you. Meanwhile you
may have striven to become as much as possible a part of the exotic life into
which you have entered,—may have adopted its customs, learned its language.
But you cannot mix with it mentally;—You circulate only as an oil-drop in its
current. You still feel yourself alone.
The very longest West Indian day is but twelve hours fifty-six minutes;—perhaps
your first dissatisfaction was evoked by the brevity of the days. There is no
twilight whatever; and all activity ceases with sundown: there is no going outside
of the city after dark, because of snakes;—club life here ends at the hour it only
begins abroad;—there is no visiting of evenings; after the seven o'clock dinner,
everyone prepares to retire. And the foreigner, accustomed to make evening a
time for social intercourse, finds no small difficulty in resigning himself to this
habit of early retiring. The natural activity of a European or American mind
requires some intellectual exercise,—at least some interchange of ideas with
sympathetic natures; the hours during the suspension of business after noon, or
those following the closing of offices at sunset, are the only ones in which busy
men may find time for such relaxation; and these very hours have been always
devoted to restorative sleep by the native population ever since the colony
began. Naturally, therefore, the stranger dreads the coming of the darkness, the
inevitable isolation of long sleepless hours. And if he seek those solaces for
loneliness which he was wont to seek at home,—reading, study,—he is made to
comprehend, as never before, what the absence of all libraries, lack of books,
inaccessibility of all reading-matter, means for the man of the nineteenth century.
One must send abroad to obtain even a review, and wait months for its coming.
And this mental starvation gnaws at the brain more and more as one feels less
inclination and less capacity for effort, and as that single enjoyment, which at
first rendered a man indifferent to other pleasures,—the delight of being alone
with tropical Nature,—becomes more difficult to indulge. When lethargy has
totally mastered habit and purpose, and you must at last confess yourself
resigned to view Nature from your chamber, or at best from a carriage window,—
then, indeed, the want of all literature proves a positive torture. It is not a
consolation to discover that you are an almost solitary sufferer,—from climate as
well as from mental hunger. With amazement and envy you see young girls
passing to walk right across the island and back before sunset, under burdens
difficult for a strong man to lift to his shoulder;—the same journey on horseback
would now weary you for days. You wonder of what flesh and blood can these
people be made,—what wonderful vitality lies in those slender woman-bodies,
which, under the terrible sun, and despite their astounding expenditure of force,
remain cool to the sight and touch as bodies of lizards and serpents! And
contrasting this savage strength with your own weakness, you begin to
understand better how mighty the working of those powers which temper races
and shape race habits in accordance with environment.
... Ultimately, if destined for acclimatation, you will cease to suffer from these
special conditions; but ere this can be, a long period of nervous irritability must
be endured; and fevers must thin the blood, soften the muscles, transform the
Northern tint of health to a dead brown. You will have to learn that intellectual
pursuits can be persisted in only at risk of life;—that in this part of the world
there is nothing to do but to plant cane and cocoa, and make rum, and cultivate
tobacco,—or open a magazine for the sale of Madras handkerchiefs and foulards,
—and eat, drink, sleep, perspire. You will understand why the tropics settled by
European races produce no sciences, arts, or literature,—why the habits and the
thoughts of other centuries still prevail where Time itself moves slowly as though
enfeebled by the heat.
And with the compulsory indolence of your life, the long exacerbation of the
nervous system, will come the first pain of nostalgia,—the first weariness of the
tropics. It is not that Nature can become ever less lovely to your sight; but that
the tantalization of her dangerous beauty, which you may enjoy only at a safe
distance, exasperates at last. The colors that at first bewitched will vex your eyes
by their violence;—the creole life that appeared so simple, so gentle, will reveal
dulnesses and discomforts undreamed of. You will ask yourself how much longer
can you endure the prodigious light, and the furnace heat of blinding blue days,
and the void misery of sleepless nights, and the curse of insects, and the sound
of the mandibles of enormous roaches devouring the few books in your
possession. You will grow weary of the grace of the palms, of the gemmy colors
of the ever-clouded peaks, of the sight of the high woods made impenetrable by
lianas and vines and serpents. You will weary even of the tepid sea, because to
enjoy it as a swimmer you must rise and go out at hours while the morning air is
still chill and heavy with miasma;—you will weary, above all, of tropic fruits, and
feel that you would gladly pay a hundred francs for the momentary pleasure of
biting into one rosy juicy Northern apple.

VI

—But if you believe this disillusion perpetual,—if you fancy the old bewitchment
has spent all its force upon you,—you do not know this Nature. She is not done
with you yet: she has only torpefied your energies a little. Of your willingness to
obey her, she takes no cognizance;—she ignores human purposes, knows only
molecules and their combinations; and the blind blood in your veins,—thick with
Northern heat and habit,—is still in dumb desperate rebellion against her.
Perhaps she will quell this revolt forever,—thus:—
One day, in the second hour of the afternoon, a few moments after leaving
home, there will come to you a sensation such as you have never known before:
a sudden weird fear of the light.
It seems to you that the blue sky-fire is burning down into your brain,—that the
flare of the white pavements and yellow walls is piercing somehow into your life,
—creating an unfamiliar mental confusion,—blurring out thought.... Is the whole
world taking fire?... The flaming azure of the sea dazzles and pains like a
crucible-glow;—the green of the mornes flickers and blazes in some amazing
way.... Then dizziness inexpressible: you grope with eyes shut fast—afraid to
open them again in that stupefying torrefaction,—moving automatically,—vaguely
knowing you must get out of the flaring and flashing,—somewhere, anywhere
away from the white wrath of the sun, and the green fire of the hills, and the
monstrous color of the sea.... Then, remembering nothing, you find yourself in
bed,—with an insupportable sense of weight at the back of the head,—a pulse
beating furiously,—and a strange sharp pain at intervals stinging through your
eyes.... And the pain grows, expands,—fills all the skull,—forces you to cry out,
replaces all other sensations except a weak consciousness, vanishing and
recurring, that you are very sick, more sick than ever before in all your life.

... And with the tedious ebbing of the long fierce fever, all the heat seems to pass
from your veins. You can no longer imagine, as before, that it would be delicious
to die of cold;—you shiver even with all the windows closed;—you feel currents
of air,—imperceptible to nerves in a natural condition,—which shock like a dash of
cold water, whenever doors are opened and closed; the very moisture upon your
forehead is icy. What you now wish for are stimulants and warmth. Your blood
has been changed;—tropic Nature has been good to you: she is preparing you to
dwell with her.
... Gradually, under the kind nursing of those colored people,—among whom, as
a stranger, your lot will probably be cast,—you recover strength; and perhaps it
will seem to you that the pain of lying a while in the Shadow of Death is more
than compensated by this rare and touching experience of human goodness.
How tirelessly watchful,—how naïvely sympathetic,—how utterly self-sacrificing
these women-natures are! Patiently, through weeks of stifling days and sleepless
nights,—cruelly unnatural to them, for their life is in the open air,—they struggle
to save without one murmur of fatigue, without heed of their most ordinary
physical wants, without a thought of recompense;—trusting to their own skill
when the physician abandons hope,—climbing to the woods for herbs when
medicines prove, without avail. The dream of angels holds nothing sweeter than
this reality of woman's tenderness.
And simultaneously with the return of force, you may wonder whether this
sickness has not sharpened your senses in some extraordinary way,—especially
hearing, sight, and smell. Once well enough to be removed without danger, you
will be taken up into the mountains somewhere,—for change of air; and there it
will seem to you, perhaps, that never before did you feel so acutely the pleasure
of perfumes,—of color-tones,—of the timbre of voices. You have simply been
acclimated.... And suddenly the old fascination of tropic Nature seizes you again,
—more strongly than in the first days;—the frisson of delight returns; the joy of it
thrills through all your blood,—making a great fulness at your heart as of
unutterable desire to give thanks....

VII

... My friend Felicien had come to the colony fresh from the region of the Vosges,
with the muscles and energies of a mountaineer, and cheeks pink as a French
country-girl's;—he had never seemed to me physically adapted for acclimation;
and I feared much for him on hearing of his first serious illness. Then the news of
his convalescence came to me as a grateful surprise. But I did not feel reassured
by his appearance the first evening I called at the little house to which he had
been removed, on the brow of a green height overlooking the town. I found him
seated in a berceuse on the veranda. How wan he was, and how spectral his
smile of welcome,—as he held out to me a hand that seemed all of bone!
... We chatted there a while. It had been one of those tropic days whose charm
interpenetrates and blends with all the subtler life of sensation, and becomes a
luminous part of it forever,—steeping all after-dreams of ideal peace in supernal
glory of color,—transfiguring all fancies of the pure joy of being. Azure to the sea-
line the sky had remained since morning; and the trade-wind, warm as a caress,
never brought even one gauzy cloud to veil the naked beauty of the peaks.
And the sun was yellowing,—as only over the tropics he yellows to his death.
Lilac tones slowly spread through sea and heaven from the west;—mornes facing
the light began to take wondrous glowing color,—a tone of green so fiery that it
looked as though all the rich sap of their woods were phosphorescing. Shadows
blued;—far peaks took tinting that scarcely seemed of earth,—iridescent violets
and purples interchanging through vapor of gold.... Such the colors of the
carangue, when the beautiful tropic fish is turned in the light, and its gem-greens
shift to rich azure and prism-purple.
Reclining in our chairs, we watched the strange splendor from the veranda of the
little cottage,—saw the peaked land slowly steep itself in the aureate glow,—the
changing color of the verdured mornes, and of the sweep of circling sea. Tiny
birds, bosomed with fire, were shooting by in long curves, like embers flung by
invisible hands. From far below, the murmur of the city rose to us,—a stormy
hum. So motionless we remained that the green and gray lizards were putting
out their heads from behind the columns of the veranda to stare at us,—as if
wondering whether we were really alive. I turned my head suddenly to look at
two queer butterflies; and all the lizards hid themselves again. Papillon-lanmò,—
Death's butterflies,—these were called in the speech of the people: their broad
wings were black like blackest velvet;—as they fluttered against the yellow light,
they looked like silhouettes of butterflies. Always through my memory of that
wondrous evening,—when I little thought I was seeing my friend's face for the
last time,—there slowly passes the black palpitation of those wings....
... I had been chatting with Felicien about various things which I thought might
have a cheerful interest for him; and more than once I had been happy to see
him smile.... But our converse waned. The ever-magnifying splendor before us
had been mesmerizing our senses,—slowly overpowering our wills with the
amazement of its beauty. Then, as the sun's disk—enormous,—blinding gold—
touched the lilac flood, and the stupendous orange glow flamed up to the very
zenith, we found ourselyes awed at last into silence.
The orange in the west deepened into vermilion. Softly and very swiftly night
rose like an indigo exhalation from the land,—filling the valleys, flooding the
gorges, blackening the woods, leaving only the points of the peaks a while to
catch the crimson glow. Forests and fields began to utter a rushing sound as of
torrents, always deepening,—made up of the instrumentation and the voices of
numberless little beings: clangings as of hammered iron, ringings as of dropping
silver upon a stone, the dry bleatings of the cabritt-bois, and the chirruping of
tree-frogs, and the k-i-i-i-i-i-i of crickets. Immense trembling sparks began to rise
and fall among the shadows,—twinkling out and disappearing all mysteriously:
these were the fire-flies awakening. Then about the branches of the bois-canon
black shapes began to hover, which were not birds—shapes flitting processionally
without any noise; each one in turn resting a moment as to nibble something at
the end of a bough;—then yielding place to another, and circling away, to return
again from the other side...the guimbos, the great bats.
But we were silent, with the emotion of sunset still upon us: that ghostly emotion
which is the transmitted experience of a race,—the sum of ancestral experiences
innumerable,—the mingled joy and pain of a million years.... Suddenly a sweet
voice pierced the stillness,—pleading:—
—"Pa combiné, chè!—pa combiné conm ça!" (Do not think, dear!—do not think
like that!)
... Only less beautiful than the sunset she seemed, this slender half-breed, who
had come all unperceived behind us, treading soundlessly with her slim bare
feet.... "And you, Missié", she said to me, in a tone of gentle reproach;—"you are
his friend! why do you let him think? It is thinking that will prevent him getting
well."
Combiné in creole signifies to think intently, and therefore to be unhappy,—
because, with this artless race, as with children, to think intensely about anything
is possible only under great stress of suffering.
—"Pa combiné,—non, chè," she repeated, plaintively, stroking Felicien's hair. "It is
thinking that makes us old.... And it is time to bid your friend good-night."...
—"She is so good," said Felicien, smiling to make her pleased;—"I could never
tell you how good. But she does not understand. She believes I suffer if I am
silent. She is contented only when she sees me laugh; and so she will tell me
creole stories by the hour to keep me amused, as if I were a child."...
As he spoke she slipped an arm about his neck.
—"Doudoux," she persisted;—and her voice was a dove's coo,—"Si ou ainmein
moin, pa combiné-non!"

And in her strange exotic beauty, her savage grace, her supple caress, the velvet
witchery of her eyes,—it seemed to me that I beheld a something imaged, not of
herself, nor of the moment only,—a something weirdly sensuous: the Spirit of
tropic Nature made golden flesh, and murmuring to each lured wanderer:—"If
thou wouldst love me, do not think"...

YÉ

Almost every night, just before bedtime, I hear some group of children
in the street telling stories to each other. Stories, enigmas or tim-tim,
and songs, and round games, are the joy of child-life here,—whether
rich or poor. I am particularly fond of listening to the stories,—which
seem to me the oddest stories I ever heard.
I succeeded in getting several dictated to me, so that I could write
them;—others were written for me by creole friends, with better
success. To obtain them in all their original simplicity and naive humor
of detail, one should be able to write them down in short-hand as fast
as they are related: they lose greatly in the slow process of dictation.
The simple mind of the native story-teller, child or adult, is seriously
tried by the inevitable interruptions and restraints of the dictation
method;—the reciter loses spirit, becomes soon weary, and purposely
shortens the narrative to finish the task as soon as possible. It seems painful to
such a one to repeat a phrase more than once,—at least in the same way; while
frequent questioning may irritate the most good-natured in a degree that shows
how painful to the untrained brain may be the exercise of memory and steady
control of imagination required for continuous dictation. By patience, however, I
succeeded in obtaining many curiosities of oral literature,—representing a group
of stories which, whatever their primal origin, have been so changed by local
thought and coloring as to form a distinctively Martinique folk-tale circle. Among
them are several especially popular with the children of my neighborhood; and I
notice that almost every narrator embellishes the original plot with details of his
own, which he varies at pleasure.
I submit a free rendering of one of these tales,—the history of Yé and the Devil.
The whole story of Yé would form a large book,—so numerous the list of his
adventures; and this adventure seems to me the most characteristic of all. Yé is
the most curious figure in Martinique folk-lore. Yé is the typical Bitaco,—or
mountain negro of the lazy kind,—the country black whom city blacks love to
poke fun at. As for the Devil of Martinique folk-lore, he resembles the travailleur
at a distance; but when you get dangerously near him, you find that he has red
eyes and red hair, and two little horns under his chapeau-Bacouè, and feet like an
ape, and fire in his throat. Y ka sam yon gouôs, gouôs macaque....

II

Ça qui pa té eonnaitt Yé?... Who is there in all Martinique who never heard of
Yé? Everybody used to know the old rascal. He had every fault under the sun;—
he was the laziest negro in the whole island; he was the biggest glutton in the
whole world. He had an amazing number of children; and they were most of the
time all half dead for hunger.
Ça qui pa té connaitt Yé?... Who is there in all Martinique who never heard of Yé?
Everybody used to know the old rascal. He had every fault under the sun;—he
was the laziest negro in the whole island; he was the biggest glutton in the whole
world. He had an amazing number[54] of children; and they were most of the
time all half dead for hunger.
Well, one day Yé went out to the woods to look for something to eat. And he
walked through the woods nearly all day, till he became ever so tired; but he
could not find anything to eat. He was just going to give up the search, when he
heard a queer crackling noise,—at no great distance. He went to see what it was,
—hiding himself behind the big trees as he got nearer to it.
All at once he came to a little hollow in the woods, and saw a great fire burning
there,—and he saw a Devil sitting beside the fire. The Devil was roasting a great
heap of snails; and the sound Yé had heard was the crackling of the snail-shells.
The Devil seemed to be very old;—he was sitting on the trunk of a bread-fruit
tree; and Yé took a good long look at him. After Yé had watched him for a while,
Yé found out that the old Devil was quite blind.
—The Devil had a big calabash in his hand full of feroce,—that is to say, boiled
salt codfish and manioc flour, with ever so many pimentos (épi en pile piment),—
just what negroes like Yé are most fond of. And the Devil seemed to be very
hungry; and the food was going so fast down his throat that it made Yé unhappy
to see it disappearing. It made him so unhappy that he felt at last he could not
resist the temptation to steal from the old blind Devil. He crept quite close up to
the Devil without making any noise, and began to rob him. Every time the Devil
would lift his hand to his mouth, Yé would slip his own fingers into the calabash,
and snatch a piece. The old Devil did not even look puzzled;—he did not seem to
know anything; and Yé thought to himself that the old Devil was a great fool. He
began to get more and more courage;—he took bigger and bigger handfuls out
of the calabash;—he ate even faster than the Devil could eat. At last there was
only one little bit left in the calabash. Yé put out his hand to take it,—and all of a
sudden the Devil made a grab at Yé's hand and caught it! Yé was so frightened
he could not even cry out, Aïe-yaïe. The Devil finished the last morsel, threw
down the calabash, and said to Yé in a terrible voice:—"Atò, saff!—ou c'est ta
moin!" (I've got you now, you glutton;—you belong to me!) Then he jumped on
Yé's back, like a great ape, and twisted his legs round Yé's neck, and cried out:
—-"Carry me to your cabin,—and walk fast!"

... When Yé's poor children saw him coming, they wondered what their papa was
carrying on his back. They thought it might be a sack of bread or vegetables or
perhaps a régime of bananas,—for it was getting dark, and they could not see
well. They laughed and showed their teeth and danced and screamed: "Here's
papa coming with something to eat!—papa's coming with something to eat!" But
when Yé had got near enough for them to see what he was carrying, they yelled
and ran away to hide themselves. As for the poor mother, she could only hold up
her two hands for horror.
When they got into the cabin the Devil pointed to a corner, and said to Yé:—"Put
me down there!" Yé put him down. The Devil sat there in the corner and never
moved or spoke all that evening and all that night. He seemed to be a very quiet
Devil indeed. The children began to look at him.
But at breakfast-time, when the poor mother had managed to procure something
for the children to eat,—just some bread-fruit and yams,—the old Devil suddenly
rose up from his corner and muttered:—
—"Manman mò!—papa mò!—touttt yche mò!" (Mamma dead!—papa dead!—all
the children dead!)
And he blew his breath on them, and they all fell down stiff as if they were dead
—raidi-cadave!. Then the Devil ate up everything there was on the table. When
he was done, he filled the pots and dishes with dirt, and blew his breath again on
Yé and all the family, and muttered:—
—"Toutt moune lévé!" (Everybody get up!)
Then they all got up. Then he pointed to all the plates and dishes full of dirt, and
said to them:—[55]
—"Gobe-moin ça!"
And they had to gobble it all up, as he told them.
After that it was no use trying to eat anything. Every time anything was cooked,
the Devil would do the same thing. It was thus the next day, and the next, and
the day after, and so every day for a long, long time.

Yé did not know what to do; but his wife said she did. If she was only a man, she
would soon get rid of that Devil. "Yé," she insisted, "go and see the Bon-Dié [the
Good-God], and ask him what to do. I would go myself if I could; but women are
not strong enough to climb the great morne."
So Yé started off very, very early one morning, before the peep of day, and
began to climb the Montagne Pelée. He climbed and walked, and walked and
climbed, until he got at last to the top of the Morne de la Croix.[56]
Then he knocked at the sky as loud as he could till the Good-God put his head
out of a cloud and asked him what he wanted:—
—"Eh bien!—ça ou ni, Yé fa ou lè?"
When Yé had recounted his troubles, the Good-God said:—
—"Pauv ma pauv! I knew it all before you came, Yé. I can tell you what to do;
but I am afraid it will be no use—you will never be able to do it! Your gluttony is
going to be the ruin of you, poor Yé! Still, you can try. Now listen well to what I
am going to tell you. First of all, you must not eat anything before you get home.
Then when your wife has the children's dinner ready, and you see the Devil
getting up, you must cry out:—'Tam ni pou tam ni bé!' Then the Devil will drop
down dead. Don't forget not to eat anything—ou tanne?"...
Yé promised to remember all he was told, and not to eat anything on his way
down;—then he said good-bye to the Bon-Dié (bien conm y faut), and started. All
the way he kept repeating the words the Good-God had told him: "Tam ni pou
tam ni bé!"—"tam ni pou tam ni bé!"—over and over again.
—But before reaching home he had to cross a little stream; and on both banks
he saw wild guava-bushes growing, with plenty of sour guavas upon them;—for it
was not yet time for guavas to be ripe. Poor Yé was hungry! He did all he could
to resist the temptation, but it proved too much for him. He broke all his
promises to the Bon-Dié: he ate and ate and ate till there were no more guavas
left,—and then he began to eat zicaques and green plums, and all sorts of nasty
sour things, till he could not eat any more.
—By the time he got to the cabin his teeth were so on edge that he could
scarcely speak distinctly enough to tell his wife to get the supper ready.
And so while everybody was happy, thinking that they were going to be freed
from their trouble, Yé was really in no condition to do anything. The moment the
supper was ready, the Devil got up from his corner as usual, and approached the
table. Then Yé tried to speak; but his teeth were so on edge that instead of
saying,—"Tam ni pou tam ni bé," he could only stammer out:—-"Anni toqué
Diabe-là cagnan."
This had no effect on the Devil at all: he seemed to be used to it! He blew his
breath on them all, sent them to sleep, ate up all the supper, filled the empty
dishes with filth, awoke Yé and his family, and ordered them as usual;—
—"Gobe-moin ça!" And they had to gobble it up,—every bit of it.

The family nearly died of hunger and disgust. Twice more Yé climbed the
Montagne Pelée; twice more he climbed the Morne de la Croix; twice more he
disturbed the poor Bon-Dié, all for nothing!—since each time on his way down he
would fill his paunch with all sorts of nasty sour things, so that he could not
speak right. The Devil remained in the house night and day;—the poor mother
threw herself down on the ground, and pulled out her hair,—so unhappy she
was!
But luckily for the poor woman, she had one child as cunning as a rat,[57]—a boy
called Ti Fonté (little Impudent), who bore his name well. When he saw his
mother crying so much, he said to her:—
—"Mamma, send papa just once more to see the Good-God: I know something
to do!"
The mother knew how cunning her boy was: she felt sure he meant something
by his words;—she sent old Yé for the last time to see the Bon-Dié.
Yé used always to wear one of those big long coats they call lavalasses;—
whether it was hot or cool, wet or dry, he never went out without it. There were
two very big pockets in it—one on each side. When Ti Fonté saw his father
getting ready to go, he jumped floup! into one of the pockets and hid himself
there. Yé climbed all the way to the top of the Morne de la Croix without
suspecting anything. When he got there the little boy put one of his ears out of
Yé's pocket,—so as to hear everything the Good-God would say.
This time he was very angry,—the Bon-Dié: he spoke very crossly; he scolded Yé
a great deal. But he was so kind for all that,—he was so generous to good-for-
nothing Yé, that he took the pains to repeat the words over and over again for
him:—"Tam ni pou tam ni bé."... And this time the Bon-Dié was not talking to no
purpose: there was somebody there well able to remember what he said. Ti
Fonté made the most of his chance;—he sharpened that little tongue of his; he
thought of his mamma and all his little brothers and sisters dying of hunger down
below. As for his father, Yé did as he had done before—stuffed himself with all
the green fruit he could find.
The moment Yé got home and took off his coat, Ti Fonté jumped out, plapp!—
and ran to his mamma, and whispered:—
—"Mamma, get ready a nice, big dinner!—we are going to have it all to ourselves
to-day: the Good-God didn't talk for nothing,—I heard every word he said!"
Then the mother got ready a nice calalou-crabe, a tonton-banane, a matété-
cirique,—several calabashes of couss-caye, two régimes-figues (bunches of small
bananas),—in short, a very fine dinner indeed, with a chopine of tafia to wash it
all well down.
The Devil felt as sure of himself that day as he had always felt, and got up the
moment everything was ready. But Ti Fonté got up too, and yelled out just as
loud as he could:—-"Tam ni pou tam ni bé!"
At once the Devil gave a scream so loud that it could be heard right down to the
bottom of hell,—and he fell dead.
Meanwhile, Yé, like the old fool he was, kept trying to say what the Bon-Dié had
told him, and could only mumble:—
—"Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan!"
He would never have been able to do anything;—and his wife had a great mind
just to send him to bed at once, instead of letting him sit down to eat all those
nice things. But she was a kind-hearted soul; and so she let Yé stay and eat with
the children, though he did not deserve it. And they all ate and ate, and kept on
eating and filling themselves until daybreak—pauv piti!
But during this time the Devil had begun to smell badly and he had become
swollen so big that Yé found he could not move him. Still, they knew they must
get him out of the way somehow. The children had eaten so much that they were
all full of strength—yo tè plein lafòce; and Yé got a rope and tied one end round
the Devil's foot; and then he and the children—all pulling together—managed to
drag the Devil out of the cabin and into the bushes, where they left him just like
a dead dog. They all felt themselves very happy to be rid of that old Devil.

But some days after old good-for-nothing Yé went off to hunt for birds. He had a
whole lot of arrows with him. He suddenly remembered the Devil, and thought
he would like to take one more look at him. And he did.
Fouinq! what a sight! The Devil's belly had swelled up like a morne: it was yellow
and blue and green,—looked as if it was going to burst. And Yé, like the old fool
he always was, shot an arrow up in the air, so that it fell down and stuck into the
Devil's belly. Then he wanted to get the arrow, and he climbed up on the Devil,
and pulled and pulled till he got the arrow out. Then he put the point of the
arrow to his nose,—just to see what sort of a smell dead Devils had.
The moment he did that, his nose swelled up as big as the refinery-pot of a
sugar-plantation.

Yé could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose; but he had to go and see the
Bon-Dié again. The Bon-Dié said to him:—
—"Ah! Yé, my poor Yé, you will live and die a fool!—you are certainly the biggest
fool in the whole world!... Still, I must try to do something for you;—I'll help you
anyhow to get rid of that nose!... I'll tell you how to do it. To-morrow morning,
very early, get up and take a big taya [whip], and beat all the bushes well, and
drive all the birds to the Roche de la Caravelle. Then you must tell them that I,
the Bon-Dié, want them to take off their bills and feathers, and take a good bath
in the sea. While they are bathing, you can choose a nose for yourself out of the
heap of bills there."
Poor Yé did just as the Good-God told him; and while the birds were bathing, he
picked out a nose for himself from the heap of beaks,—and left his own refinery-
pot in its place.
The nose he took was the nose of the coulivicou.[58] And that is why the
coulivicou always looks so much ashamed of himself even to this day.

[54]In the patois, "yon rafale yche"—"a whirlwind of children."

[55]In the original:—"Y té ka monté assous tabe-là, épi y té ka fai caca adans toutt plats-à, adans
toutt zassiett-là."
[56]A peaklet rising above the verge of the ancient crater now filled with water.
[57]The great field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique folklore, the symbol of all cunning, and
probably merits its reputation.
[58]The coulivicou, or "Colin Vicou," is a Martinique bird with a long meagre body, and an
enormous bill. It has a very tristful and taciturn expression.... Maig conm yon coulivicou, "thin as
a coulivicou," is a popular comparison for the appearance of anybody much reduced by sickness.

III

... Poor Yé!—you still live for me only too vividly outside of those strange folk-
tales of eating and of drinking which so cruelly reveal the long slave-hunger of
your race. For I have seen you cutting cane on peak slopes above the clouds;—I
have seen you climbing from plantation to plantation with your cutlass in your
hand, watching for snakes as you wander to look for work, when starvation
forces you to obey a master, though born with the resentment of centuries
against all masters;—I have seen you prefer to carry two hundred-weight of
bananas twenty miles to market, rather than labor in the fields;—I have seen you
ascending through serpent-swarming woods to some dead crater to find a
cabbage-palm,—and always hungry,—and always shiftless! And you are still a
great fool, poor Yé!—and you have still your swarm of children,—your rafale
yche,—and they are famished; for you have taken into your ajoupa a Devil who
devours even more than you can earn,—even your heart, and your splendid
muscles, and your poor artless brain,—the Devil Tafia!... And there is no Bon-Dié
to help you rid yourself of him now: for the only Bon-Dié you ever really had,
your old creole master, cannot care for you any more, and you cannot care for
yourself. Mercilessly moral, the will of this enlightened century has abolished
forever that patriarchal power which brought you up strong and healthy on
scanty fare, and scourged you into its own idea of righteousness, yet kept you
innocent as a child of the law of the struggle for life. But you feel that law now;—
you are a citizen of the Republic! you are free to vote, and free to work, and free
to starve if you prefer it, and free to do evil and suffer for it;—and this new
knowledge stupefies you so that you have almost forgotten how to laugh!
 LYS

It is only half-past four o'clock: there is the faintest blue light of

beginning day,—and little Victoire already stands at the bedside with my
wakening cup of hot black fragrant coffee. What! so early?... Then with
a sudden heart-start I remember this is my last West Indian morning.
And the child—her large timid eyes all gently luminous—is pressing
something into my hand.
Two vanilla beans wrapped in a morsel of banana-leaf,—her poor little
farewell gift!...
Other trifling souvenirs are already packed away. Almost everybody that
knows me has given me something. Manm-Robert brought me a tiny
packet of orange-seeds,—seeds of a "gift-orange": so long as I can keep
these in my vest-pocket I will never be without money. Cyrillia brought
me a package of bouts, and a pretty box of French matches, warranted
inextinguishable by wind. Azaline, the blanchisseuse, sent me a little pocket
looking-glass. Cerbonnie, the màchanne, left a little cup of guava jelly for me last
night. Mimi—dear child!—brought me a little paper dog! It is her best toy; but
those gentle black eyes would stream with tears if I dared to refuse it.... Oh,
Mimi! what am I to do with a little paper dog? And what am I to do with the
chocolate-sticks and the cocoanuts and all the sugar-cane and all the cinnamon-
apples?...

II

... Twenty minutes past five by the clock of the Bourse. The hill shadows are
shrinking back from the shore;—the long wharves reach out yellow into the sun;
—the tamarinds of the Place Bertin, and the pharos for half its height, and the
red-tiled roofs along the bay are catching the glow. Then, over the light-house—
on the outermost line depending from the southern yard-arm of the semaphore—
a big black ball suddenly runs up like a spider climbing its own thread.... Steamer
from the South! The packet has been sighted. And I have not yet been able to
pack away into a specially purchased wooden box all the fruits and vegetable
curiosities and odd little presents sent to me. If Radice the boatman had not
come to help me, I should never be able to get ready; for the work of packing is
being continually interrupted by friends and acquaintances coming to say good-
bye. Manm-Robert brings to see me a pretty young girl—very fair, with a violet
foulard twisted about her blonde head. It is little Basilique, who is going to make
her pouémiè communion. So I kiss her, according to the old colonial custom,
once on each downy cheek;—and she is to pray to Notre Dame du Bon Port that
the ship shall bear me safely to far-away New York.
And even then the steamer's cannon-call shakes over the town and into the hills
behind us, which answer with all the thunder of their phantom artillery.

III

... There is a young white lady, accompanied by an aged negress, already waiting
on the south wharf for the boat;—evidently she is to be one of my fellow-
passengers. Quite a pleasing presence: slight graceful figure,—a face not
precisely pretty, but delicate and sensitive, with the odd charm of violet eyes
under black eye-brows....
A friend who comes to see me off tells me all about her. Mademoiselle Lys is
going to New York to be a governess,—to leave her native island forever. A story
sad enough, though not more so than that of many a gentle creole girl. And she
is going all alone, for I see her bidding good-bye to old Titine,—kissing her. "Adié
encò, chè;—Bon-Dié ké béni ou!" sobs the poor servant, with tears streaming
down her kind black face. She takes off her blue shoulder-kerchief, and waves it
as the boat recedes from the wooden steps.

... Fifteen minutes later, Mademoiselle and I find ourselves under the awnings
shading the saloon-deck of the Guadeloupe. There are at least fifty passengers,—
many resting in chairs, lazy-looking Demerara chairs with arm-supports
immensely lengthened so as to form rests for the lower limbs. Overhead,
suspended from the awning-frames, are two tin cages containing parrots;—and I
see two little greenish monkeys, no bigger than squirrels, tied to the wheel-
hatch,—two sakiwinkis. These are from the forests of British Guiana. They keep
up a continual thin sharp twittering, like birds,—all the while circling, ascending,
descending, retreating or advancing to the limit of the little ropes attaching them
to the hatch.
The Guadeloupe has seven hundred packages to deliver at St. Pierre: we have
ample time,—Mademoiselle Violet-Eyes and I,—to take one last look at the "Pays
des Revenants."
I wonder what her thoughts are, feeling a singular sympathy for her,—for I am in
that sympathetic mood which the natural emotion of leaving places and persons
one has become fond of, is apt to inspire. And now at the moment of my going,—
when I seem to understand as never before the beauty of that tropic Nature, and
the simple charm of the life to which I am bidding farewell,—the question comes
to me: "Does she not love it all as I do,—nay, even much more, because of that
in her own existence which belongs to it?" But as a child of the land, she has
seen no other skies,—fancies, perhaps, there may be brighter ones....
... Nowhere on this earth, Violet-Eyes!—nowhere beneath this sun!... Oh! the
dawnless glory of tropic morning!—the single sudden leap of the giant light over
the purpling of a hundred peaks,—over the surging of the mornes! And the early
breezes from the hills,—all cool out of the sleep of the forests, and heavy with
vegetal odors thick, sappy, savage-sweet!—and the wild high winds that run
ruffling and crumpling through the cane of the mountain slopes in storms of
papery sound!—
And the mighty dreaming of the woods,—green-drenched with silent pouring of
creepers,—dashed with the lilac and yellow and rosy foam of liana flowers!—
And the eternal azure apparition of the all-circling sea,—that as you mount the
heights ever appears to rise perpendicularly behind you,—that seems, as you
descend, to sink and flatten before you!—
And the violet velvet distances of evening;—and the swaying of palms against the
orange-burning,—when all the heaven seems filled with vapors of a molten
sun!...

IV

How beautiful the mornes and azure-shadowed hollows in the jewel clearness of
this perfect morning! Even Pelée wears only her very lightest head-dress of
gauze; and all the wrinklings of her green robe take unfamiliar tenderness of tint
from the early sun. All the quaint peaking of the colored town—sprinkling the
sweep of blue bay with red and yellow and white-of-cream—takes a sharpness in
this limpid light as if seen through a diamond lens; and there above the living
green of the familiar hills I can see even the faces of the statues—the black
Christ on his white cross, and the White Lady of the Morne d'Orange—among
curving palms.... It is all as though the island were donning its utmost possible
loveliness, exerting all its witchery,—seeking by supremest charm to win back
and hold its wandering child,—Violet-Eyes over there!... She is looking too.
I wonder if she sees the great palms of the Voie du Parnasse,—curving far away
as to bid us adieu, like beautiful bending women. I wonder if they are not trying
to say something to her; and I try myself to fancy what that something is:—
—"Child, wilt thou indeed abandon all who love thee!... Listen!—'tis a dim grey
land thou goest unto,—a land of bitter winds,—a land of strange gods,—a land of
hardness and barrenness, where even Nature may not live through half the
cycling of the year! Thou wilt never see us there.... And there, when thou shalt
sleep thy long sleep, child—that land will have no power to lift thee up;—vast
weight of stone will press thee down forever;—until the heavens be no more thou
shalt not awake!... But here, darling, our loving roots would seek for thee, would
find thee: thou shouldst live again!—we lift, like Aztec priests, the blood of hearts
to the Sun."...

... It is very hot.... I hold in my hand a Japanese paper-fan with a design upon it
of the simplest sort: one jointed green bamboo, with a single spurt of sharp
leaves, cutting across a pale blue murky double streak that means the horizon
above a sea. That is all. Trivial to my Northern friends this design might seem;
but to me it causes a pleasure bordering on pain.... I know so well what the artist
means; and they could not know, unless they had seen bamboos,—and bamboos
peculiarly situated. As I look at this fan I know myself descending the Morne
Parnasse by the steep winding road; I have the sense of windy heights behind
me, and forest on either hand, and before me the blended azure of sky and sea
with one bamboo-spray swaying across it at the level of my eyes. Nor is this all;
—I have the every sensation of the very moment,—the vegetal odors, the mighty
tropic light, the warmth, the intensity of irreproducible color.... Beyond a doubt,
the artist who dashed the design on this fan with his miraculous brush must have
had a nearly similar experience to that of which the memory is thus aroused in
me, but which I cannot communicate to others.
... And it seems to me now that all which I have tried to write about the Pays des
Revenants can only be for others, who have never beheld it,—vague like the
design upon this fan.

VI

Brrrrrrrrrrr!... The steam-winch is lifting the anchor; and the Guadeloupe

trembles through every plank as the iron torrent of her chain-cable rumbles
through the hawse-holes.... At last the quivering ceases;—there is a moment's
silence; and Violet-Eyes seems trying to catch a last glimpse of her faithful bonne
among the ever-thickening crowd upon the quay.... Ah! there she is—waving her
foulard. Mademoiselle Lys is waving a handkerchief in reply....
Suddenly the shock of the farewell gun shakes heavily through our hearts, and
over the bay,—where the tall mornes catch the flapping thunder, and buffet it
through all their circle in tremendous mockery. Then there is a great whirling and
whispering of whitened water behind the steamer—another,—another; and the
whirl becomes a foaming stream: the mighty propeller is playing!.... All the blue
harbor swings slowly round;—and the green limbs of the land are pushed out
further on the left, shrink back upon the right;—and the mountains are moving
their shoulders. And then the many-tinted façades,—and the tamarinds of the
Place Bertin,—and the light-house,—and the long wharves with their throng of
turbaned women,—and the cathedral towers,—and the fair palms,—and the
statues of the hills,—all veer, change place, and begin to float away... steadily,
very swiftly.
Farewell, fair city,—sun-kissed city,—many-fountained city!—dear yellow-
glimmering streets,—white pavements learned by heart,—and faces ever looked
for,—and voices ever loved! Farewell, white towers with your golden-throated
bells!—farewell, green steeps, bathed in the light of summer everlasting!—craters
with your coronets of forest!—bright mountain paths upwinding 'neath pomp of
fern and angelin and feathery bamboo!—and gracious palms that drowse above
the dead! Farewell, soft-shadowing majesty of valleys unfolding to the sun,—
green golden cane-fields ripening to the sea!...

... The town vanishes. The island slowly becomes a green silhouette. So might
Columbus first have seen it from the deck of his caravel,—nearly four hundred
years ago. At this distance there are no more signs of life upon it than when it
first became visible to his eyes: yet there are cities there,—and toiling,—and
suffering,—and gentle hearts that knew me.... Now it is turning blue,—the
beautiful shape!—becoming a dream....

VII

And Dominica draws nearer,—sharply massing her hills against the vast light in
purple nodes and gibbosities and denticulations. Closer and closer it comes, until
the green of its heights breaks through the purple here and there,—in flashings
and ribbings of color. Then it remains as if motionless a while;—then the green
lights go out again,—and all the shape begins to recede sideward towards the
south.
... And what had appeared a pearl-grey cloud in the north slowly reveals itself as
another island of mountains,—hunched and horned and mammiform:
Guadeloupe begins to show her double profile. But Martinique is still visible;—
Pelée still peers high over the rim of the south.... Day wanes;—the shadow of the
ship lengthens over the flower-blue water. Pelée changes aspect at last,—turns
pale as a ghost,—but will not fade away....
... The sun begins to sink as he always sinks to his death in the tropics,—swiftly,
—too swiftly!—and the glory of him makes golden all the hollow west,—and
bronzes all the flickering wave-backs. But still the gracious phantom of the island
will not go,—softly haunting us through the splendid haze. And always the tropic
wind blows soft and warm;—there is an indescribable caress in it! Perhaps some
such breeze, blowing from Indian waters, might have inspired that prophecy of
Islam concerning the Wind of the Last Day,—that "Yellow Wind, softer than silk,
balmier than musk,"—which is to sweep the spirits of the just to God in the great
Winnowing of Souls....
Then into the indigo night vanishes forever from my eyes the ghost of Pelée; and
the moon swings up,—a young and lazy moon, drowsing upon her back, as in a
hammock.... Yet a few nights more, and we shall see this slim young moon erect,
—gliding upright on her way,—coldly beautiful like a fair Northern girl.

VIII

And ever through tepid nights and azure days the Guadeloupe rushes on,—her
wake a river of snow beneath the sun, a torrent of fire beneath the stars,—
steaming straight for the North.
Under the peaking of Montserrat we steam,—beautiful Montserrat, all softly
wrinkled like a robe of greenest velvet fallen from the waist!—breaking the pretty
sleep of Plymouth town behind its screen of palms... young palms, slender and
full of grace as creole children are;—
And by tall Nevis, with her trinity of dead craters purpling through ocean-haze;—
by clouded St. Christopher's mountain-giant;—past ghostly St. Martin's, far-
floating in fog of gold, like some dream of the Saint's own Second Summer;—
Past low Antigua's vast blue harbor,—shark-haunted, bounded about by huddling
of little hills, blue and green.
Past Santa Cruz, the "Island of the Holy Cross,"—all radiant with verdure though
well nigh woodless,—nakedly beautiful in the tropic light as a perfect statue;—
Past the long cerulean reaching and heaping of Porto Rico on the left, and past
hopeless St. Thomas on the right,—old St. Thomas, watching the going and the
coming of the commerce that long since abandoned her port,—watching the
ships once humbly solicitous for patronage now turning away to the Spanish rival,
like ingrates forsaking a ruined patrician;—
And the vapory Vision of, St. John;—and the grey ghost of Tortola,—and further,
fainter, still more weirdly dim, the aureate phantom of Virgin Gorda.
 IX

Then only the enormous double-vision of sky and sea.

The sky: a cupola of blinding blue, shading down and paling into spectral green
at the rim of the world,—and all fleckless, save at evening. Then, with sunset,
comes a light gold-drift of little feathery cloudlets into the West,—stippling it as
with a snow of fire.
The sea: no flower-tint may now make my comparison for the splendor of its
lucent color. It has shifted its hue;—for we have entered into the Azure Stream: it
has more than the magnificence of burning cyanogen....
But, at night, the Cross of the South appears no more. And other changes come,
as day succeeds to day,—a lengthening of the hours of light, a longer lingering of
the after-glow,—a cooling of the wind. Each morning the air seems a little cooler,
a little rarer;—each noon the sky looks a little paler, a little further away—always
heightening, yet also more shadowy, as if its color, receding, were dimmed by
distance,—were coming more faintly down from vaster altitudes.

... Mademoiselle is petted like a child by the lady passengers. And every man
seems anxious to aid in making her voyage a pleasant one. For much of which, I
think, she may thank her eyes!

A dim morning and chill;—blank sky and sunless waters: the sombre heaven of
the North with colorless horizon rounding in a blind grey sea.... What a sudden
weight comes to the heart with the touch of the cold mist, with the spectral
melancholy of the dawn;—and then what foolish though irrepressible yearning for
the vanished azure left behind!
... The little monkeys twitter plaintively, trembling in the chilly air. The parrots
have nothing to say: they look benumbed, and sit on their perches with eyes
closed.
... A vagueness begins to shape itself along the verge of the sea, far to port: that
long heavy clouding which indicates the approach of land. And from it now floats
to us something ghostly and frigid which makes the light filmy and the sea
shadowy as a flood of dreams,—the fog of the Jersey coast.
At once the engines slacken their respiration. The Guadeloupe begins to utter her
steam-cry of warning,—regularly at intervals of two minutes,—for she is now in
the track of all the ocean vessels. And from far away we can hear a heavy
knelling,—the booming of some great fog-bell.
... All in a white twilight. The place of the horizon has vanished;—we seem ringed
in by a wall of smoke.... Out of this vapory emptiness—very suddenly—an
enormous steamer rushes, towering like a hill—passes so close that we can see
faces, and disappears again, leaving the sea heaving and frothing behind her.

... As I lean over the rail to watch the swirling of the wake, I feel something
pulling at my sleeve: a hand,—a tiny black hand,—the hand of a sakiwinki. One
of the little monkeys, straining to the full length of his string, is making this dumb
appeal for human sympathy;—the bird-black eyes of both are fixed upon me with
the oddest look of pleading. Poor little tropical exiles! I stoop to caress them; but
regret the impulse a moment later: they utter such beseeching cries when I find
myself obliged to leave them again alone!...
... Hour after hour the Guadeloupe glides on through the white gloom,—
cautiously, as if feeling her way; always sounding her whistle, ringing her bells,
until at last some brown-winged bark comes flitting to us out of the mist, bearing
a pilot.... How strange it must all seem to Mademoiselle who stands so silent
there at the rail!—how weird this veiled world must appear to her, after the
sapphire light of her own West Indian sky, and the great lazulite splendor of her
own tropic sea!
But a wind comes;—it strengthens,—begins to blow very cold. The mists thin
before its blowing; and the wan blank sky is all revealed again with livid horizon
around the heaving of the iron-grey sea.

... Thou dim and lofty heaven of the North,—grey sky of Odin,—bitter thy winds
and spectral all thy colors!—they that dwell beneath thee know not the glory of
Eternal Summer's green,—the azure splendor of southern day!—but thine are the
lightnings of Thought illuminating for human eyes the interspaces between sun
and sun. Thine the generations of might,—the strivers, the battlers,—the men
who make Nature tame!—thine the domain of inspiration and achievement,—the
larger heroisms, the vaster labors that endure, the higher knowledge, and all the
witchcrafts of science!...

But in each one of us there lives a mysterious Something which is Self, yet also
infinitely more than Self,—incomprehensibly multiple,—the complex total of
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